A Fistful of God (13 page)

“Where to?” Miguel asked.

“I’ve got all my babysitting money with me. I want to find the silver lady again. I’m going to buy a cross for Mom.”

“Gee, I wish you’d buy me some ice cream.” He dragged me in the direction of The Big Scoop.

“Later.” I pulled against him and even though he’s miles taller than me, he let me tow him through the crowds.

But we couldn’t find her. “Creepy,” I said. “She was creepy when we bought my cross, and now it’s even weirder.”

“I think she was an angel,” Miguel said. “She knew you needed a cross so she was here that day, just for you.”

“Then she ought to know Mom needs a cross.” I peered along the lines of stalls.

“Aidyn?”

I turned, met Toni’s glare. After I introduced her to Miguel as “Mom’s boss,” which told him all he needed to know of my opinion of her, she asked, “Where’s your mother? You didn’t leave her alone, did you?”

“She went to a meeting.”

Toni nodded. “I just hope you take better care of her from now on.”

After she’d stalked past us, Miguel made faces at her back. “She’s crazy. You’re not the mother. It’s not your job to look after anybody.”

I wondered, though. Things went so much smoother when I took control.

He poked me. “I want my ice cream now. You promised.”

“One scoop.” But I let him choose two and extra toppings.

As we came out of the shop, Miguel hollered, “Hey, Jackson!” He whooped, waved his cone like a lasso, and loped across the street.

I followed him. Jackson had stopped, but something about the way he looked at Miguel, and about the way he let Shannon hang on his arm, made me wonder exactly how glad he’d been to hear Miguel call him.

“I didn’t know you guys were coming here,” Miguel said. “Now we got someone to hang out with.”

“For a while, I guess,” Jackson said. “Where you guys headed?”

“Nowhere,” I told him, as Miguel said, “Wherever you’re going.”

Shannon giggled, tugged on Jackson’s arm, and whispered something. He made a face and that was when I noticed the smudges next to his mouth, which matched Shannon’s wiped-off-looking lipstick.

“Let’s go in here.” I spun Miguel into a Chinese restaurant and watched Jackson and Shannon hesitate then wander off.

“What was that all about?” Miguel demanded. “What’s wrong with spending time with friends?”

“They wanted to be alone.”

“How do you know?”

“Did they follow us in here?” I asked, just as a waiter bounded up brandishing menus.

“Table for two?”

“No.” Miguel glared at me. “Not unless you have some sort of special for crazy people.”

The waiter had been so eager to seat us he probably would have promised a
straitjacket
if it came with egg rolls, but we scurried out.

“I don’t get you, Aidyn.” Miguel stomped beside me, fists in his pockets, not even trying to hold my hand.

Our first fight, and it wasn’t even about us. I stomped away.

“Aidyn, wait up.”

I stopped, embarrassed.

“I didn’t mean to make you mad. I just wanted to hang with them.”

“It’s their date, Miguel. We can’t just tag along.”

“Yeah, well, I thought we ought to save them from themselves, you know?”

“Why?” I peered at him in the growing dark. “They like each other, but it looks like you’re trying to break them up. Are you still trying to get Shannon to go out with you?”

“No! Aidyn, no. I just…they were…you know.”

“And you wanted to what, watch?”

“No.” He started to walk, but after a second he took my hand and held it close to his side. We wandered toward the park, found it overflowing with kids and walked even farther, to the empty bandstand. Miguel hitched himself up and reached a hand down for me. I huddled next to him, kicking my heels against the platform, wondering. Something skittered in the shadows behind us and I shivered.

“Are you cold?” Miguel leaned back, his arm stretched behind me, not touching.

With him so close? “No.” But maybe he wanted me to be cold.

“Aidyn?” he whispered, much closer than I’d thought. “What would you do—I mean, do you ever…” He took a deep breath, and the sweetness left over from the ice cream brushed my cheek. “Sometimes I start thinking I’m seeing you for the last time. Like, if there’s anything I want to tell you, I have to tell you now. Do you ever feel like that?”

I shook my head.

“Sometimes I get scared, Aidyn.”

“So do I.”

We turned at the same time, and his mouth feathered against my cheek, against my lips. He held my arm, his hand warm and solid, and kissed me again.

“Oh, Miguel.” I opened my eyes. I couldn’t see anyway so I took my glasses off. “Miguel, don’t be scared. Neither one of us is going away.”

He answered with a third kiss. A long time later I looked at my watch and yelped. Even though we ran to the other end of the street fair, we were half an hour late meeting Mom.

I went to sleep late that night, exhausted, exhilarated, in trouble for being late, and in the morning I woke up with the flu.

12

Until Sunday night I couldn’t think of anything other than how bad it hurt to throw up. Mom spent as much time checking on my sleep as I had on hers, and when I finally woke without aches and cramps, she came in and perched on the edge of my bed.

“You’re looking better.” She swept the hair from my forehead. “I brought some fresh tea.”

I moaned and turned away.

“I know. I didn’t want to put anything in my stomach, either.”

She left and came back a few minutes later with a red rosebud in her best crystal vase. I gasped as she set it on my desk. “It’s perfect.” Roses, even one tiny bud, cost so much in November. “Did Miguel bring it?”

“No.” Mom crawled onto the end of my bed and sat cross legged close to my feet. “I asked Toni to bring it for you. She just left.”

“Oh, OK. It’s beautiful.” I tried to smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

She stared at her hands, and I realized I hadn’t been very gracious. “Mom, I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t like it because you gave it to me.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“You didn’t, baby. There’s something else.” Her silence scared me. She covered my knee and massaged it through my blankets. Even without my glasses, I realized how bad she looked, like she had the flu herself all over again, or like she’d just stopped drinking.

My stomach cramped again. “What’s wrong?”

“Jackson called. We weren’t at Mass, and he wanted to know if”—she swallowed—”if you had talked to Miguel’s mother.”

I sat up, the room circling around me. “Mom!”

“Baby, lie down. I won’t tell you if you don’t promise to stay put.”

“Mom,” I wailed. But I could tell she meant it. “All right. I promise.”

“Miguel is in the hospital. He’ll be all right, but right now he’s pretty bad.”

“The flu?”

“No.” She shook her head and went back to massaging my knee, as if that could take the pain from my heart. “When we dropped him off Friday night, his father—”

“He hit him.”

Mom shook her head. “Worse than that. He tried to defend himself, but Jackson said he used something—lumber or something. His mother called the police, and that’s when his dad went crazy. He went after her, too.”

I sobbed, and Mom rocked me, her words like a blanket of horror smothering my thoughts.

“They’ve kept him in the hospital because there was some internal bleeding. Aidyn—”

“I want to go see him.”

“Not ‘til you’re better.”

“He won’t know why I’m not there!”

“Jackson told him. He said Miguel looks really bad. They were glad you couldn’t see him yet.”

“But I have to—”

“You will.” I felt Mom shake as she held me. “Aidyn, his dad was drunk. And I think—I think, that could have been me and you. I could have hurt you that bad. I
have
hurt you that bad.” She rocked harder, and I felt her tears in my hair.

“I hope his dad is in jail this time.”

“They haven’t found him yet.”

“I want to see Miguel
now
.” I would not let his fears come true.

“You will, baby, just as soon as you can.”

Mom took me two days later. He looked worse than my nightmares. At least in my dreams, I could still see his eyes. He still had his smile. Now he wore bruises and stitches in equal glory, scabs bunching on his face like pus. One eye had swollen shut, and he couldn’t seem to focus the other.

Jackson said, “Hey, buddy, I brought the girl.”

Miguel raised his hand, the one not attached to tubes, an inch off the white sheet.

Mom, on my other side, touched my shoulder. “I’m going to talk to your mother, Miguel. I’ll be right outside.”

I nodded and stared at Miguel. His open eye seemed steadier. His free hand inched toward me. A splint strapped two fingers but I slipped my hand under his and felt the rest of his fingers curl around mine.

“Oh, Miguel.” Fear and pity choked me with equal intensity.

“I still say you should’ve done this before Halloween,” Jackson teased. “You’d have made a great ghoul.”

Miguel grunted, a cross between a laugh and a croak.

“I’m gonna wait outside, too.” Jackson pulled the heavy door shut behind him, and Miguel and I were alone.

“I guess you couldn’t stop him.” I wiped my eyes then bent to kiss his hand. I wanted so badly to feel his lips on mine, but they were covered with stitches, and it would only hurt him. “Mom said the police are looking for him.”

He nodded.

“I hope they catch him. I hope they lock him up ‘til he rots.” Until right then I didn’t know how much I hated Miguel’s father. And as I sat on Miguel’s hospital bed, holding the few fingers I could, I understood a little of Mom’s horror that
she
could have been the monster, the same kind of monster, and I cried.

Twice after that, I visited Miguel in the hospital. Jackson and Shannon were both really good about giving me rides after school. Both times they waited for me in the hall, as if standing guard. Only when we were on the way home after the last time did Jackson explain why.

“I guess his dad’s making some threats—”

“Threats?” I turned in the seat, glaring as if Jackson had been the one to make them. “Hasn’t he done enough?”

“Doesn’t sound like he thinks so.”

“Can’t they just find him? He’s horrible!”

Shannon leaned over the bench seat to touch my shoulder. “We all know that, Aidyn. But that’s why no one wanted to let you go there by yourself. Just in case he showed up again.”

“What about when I’m not there?”

“They’re watching him, I promise.” Jackson slowed to stop in front of my apartment building. “Did he tell you he’s supposed to get out tomorrow?”

I nodded. “Can we do something for him? Have some sort of celebration? Lucy could do something like that, couldn’t she?”

“I’ll ask her,” Jackson said.

And I walked up the stairs to my apartment shivering with the thought that the monster might be after me, too.

The next day the phone started ringing before I got through the door. I tossed my books on the coffee table and grabbed the receiver, hoping it would be Miguel, telling me he’d gone home.

“I’m home,” he assured me, once I’d gotten over my excitement. “For now.”

“You’re not going somewhere now, are you? You can’t, you can barely walk!”

“My mom said I could tell you now.”

“What?” But a part of me broke the same way his voice did.

“We have to leave. My mom’s in danger, so we have to go somewhere he can’t find us.”

“But you can tell me, can’t you?”

“The police”—he choked on a sob—”No, Aidyn, I can’t tell you. The police say it’s too dangerous because the jerk could get you to tell him and then it would be useless—our hiding, I mean.”

“But when are you coming back?”

“I don’t know. If they find him, I guess we can come back.”

“No!”

“Aidyn, please—”

“You can’t leave me!”

“He hit my mom.” The truth was all there in his voice: Why he was going. Why he hadn’t told me before. Why he wouldn’t tell me now where they were going. Why protecting his mother meant more to him than anything.

I glanced at Mom. “Can I come see you first?”

“No, we’re leaving right now.” Muffled words, then he said, “Mom said she’ll bring me by for a few minutes.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.” I heard nothing, but I felt his struggle with his tears.

Why is it that good-byes are so bleak, that your mind is already on the time when you’ll be apart, already crying?

Mom and Mrs. Rosas shared tea in the kitchen while Miguel and I huddled in the living room, as though we had to hide from anyone looking in the windows. But this would be his life from now on, this hiding, this fear. The only difference would be me. I wouldn’t be a part of it.

He kissed me a few times, but I could tell it hurt. He stroked my chin, my shoulder blades, and lifted my cross. “Maybe you should try to find the silver lady again. We need another miracle.”

“She can’t do miracles. She’s just a creepy lady.” My throat tightened.

“You never know.” Even with the swelling down I could tell it hurt him to smile, but he tried. “Come on, Aidyn. Have a little faith.”

“Faith in what? In some crazy lady who doesn’t even know me? In what?”

“In God, maybe?” His smile disappeared. “I gave you that cross for a reason.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” I looked away. “Most of the time, faith doesn’t do me any good.”

“Oh, Aidyn, I don’t want to fight. I want you to think of me and remember how much—” He kissed me again. “Remember I love you,” he whispered.

Before they left, his mother dug in her purse and pulled out a copy of his junior picture. She pushed it into my hand. “You keep it.”

I cried hot tears and rummaged in Mom’s stash of photos to find a few of myself. He limped over to me and picked up the photo of my dad and me, the same one Mom had given me.

“You don’t look like him, much, except your chin. You’re stubborn.” He laughed.

“I look like Mom.”